nigelforbes

Media reports are that the $42 bill. bank run that started a couple of days before the banks collapse, was initiated by Venture Capitalist companies. The VC's were apparently spreading the word for the greater good - short sellers had already spotted the liquidity problem long before and had built substantial positions betting against the bank. Short selling is one aspect but the white night role of VC's is concerning and raises questions about motives.

Yes! Thailand offers two types of bank account, Resident and Non-Resident. Almost everyone who applies is offered the Resident account by default, but if you ask and say you want a non-resident account they are readily available. The upside of Non-Resident accounts are that funds can be transferred to and from the account, from overseas, without limit and without requiring approval. The downside is that no interest can be paid on the account and you cannot deposit Thai Baht.

If you've taken all the medication you say you have and you are still suffering after two weeks, it's nothing simple, go see a doctor now.

Fatty liver is easily treated. Two common causes are alcohol consumption or food (NAFL), both are easily treated by exercise, diet changes and reducing alcohol intake....been there, done that, it's not a biggee unless you do nothing. EDIT to add: I forgot, apparently another cause is excessive or long term use of artificial sweeteners. It seems the body doesn't know what to do with aspartame or perhaps its dietary fructose or sucrose (or similar) so it parks it on the liver, well you would, wouldn't you!.

I'm not sure. We currently have several regional trade groups that operate by different rules. NAFTA covers the America's whilst an up and coming one in Asia involves East Asian countries, China, Japan and Australia. Europe of course has its own trade group in the EU. This is a step down from total globalization, one of the purposes of the Asian trade group is to avoid using USD as a means of settling trade bills. I do think Asia wants to get away from Dollar dominance and part of that means not allowing US control of the region. It's complex.

The East operating to its own economic and trade framework and growing at one speed whilst the West is operating to a different set of rules, and growing at a different rate of knots.

Bangkok to Chiang Mai rail, the first part of the journey will need to be via a high speed submarine in a few years when Bangkok is uuderwater.

Yes, perhaps, although it's not as clear cut as that. Trade and the US's position on Taiwan and other issues, the SCMP article from mid 2022 makes some good points: https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3180335/american-aggression-needs-be-reined-good-asia-and-world

I don't understand why you posted that because it doesn't support your point that, "Some parts of Thailand, mainly the south. The rest of the country is choking on its own pollution". In fact, it appears to support the opposite. The South appears fairly free of hotspots whilst Thailand appears to be surrounded by a high volume of hot spots in niegbouring countries.

It seems the CEO, one Greg Becker, sold USD 3.6 mill. in stock in late February, under a blind trust. Coincidental? Who knows.

Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. Well that worked out well! I find it hard to understand the logic that consumers are better protected when smaller banks should be subject to less stressful rules than big banks.

What was the rationale for Trump doing that? Your link is behind a paywall so I can't tell, if indeed it is explained why.

I find it hard to understand who the aggressors are in all of this, there's some cause and effect involved.

https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:2023-03-09..2023-03-10,2023-03-09;@66.5,16.0,3z

This seems to be a rising interest rates story at a relatively young bank that served startups in Silicon Valley.The bank that failed, Silvergate, saw a funds outflow because the Fed was raising interest rates, which it is forecasted to continue doing, potentially even more aggressively. Depositors at the bank, many of whom were new or up and coming tech. startups, withdrew funds to invest elsewhere at higher rates of return. This happens all the time everywhere as interest rates rise. The problem at SVB was the large number of higher value accounts from the tech start-ups, the bank appears not to have had the traditional consumer base of large numbers of stable smaller account holders that act as a cushion.This forced SVB to raise capital because lending rules demand a certain level of liquidity that is covered by deposits and this was being threatened. The bank was holding Treasury Bonds which are about as stable an investment as you can get. If you hold the bonds until maturity, you get all your money back and in the meantime you've received coupon/interest payments. BUT, if you have to sell early (and SVB did), AND, if in the meantime the Fed has issued new bonds because they were raising interest rates (which they were), the redemption value of the bond is discounted because they were sold prior to maturity. This means the bonds were sold at a loss and this showed up in the share price of the bank which was quickly spotted by short sellers who bet against the shares, big time, and the ball started to roll downhill. A hedge fund publicly told depositors to withdraw their funds which of course didn't help matters. The FDIC took control of the bank Friday.A second bank is in a similar position, SVB Financial. SVB is in a mess because of customers who invested in crypto and withdrew funds after the crash of FTX. But it's the same story, enforced sales, enforced losses, SVB is currently trying to raise capital.So then contagion comes into play and the herd starts to panic and suddenly every bank in the world is going to fail, according to social media pundits. The threat of enforced sales and enforced losses of Treasury Bonds at banks, in a rising interest rate environment is a real risk and doubtless there will be other banks out there that aren't well capitalized and some may fail. But bank liquidity rules are rigidly enforced and most banks will have a stable base of customer deposits which tend to act as a cushion or stable base because they tend not to be volatile.What is interesting in this example is that the bank failed on the day that the US Jobs Report showed that new jobs were down, which pointed to a reduced need to increase rates further and faster. You may have seen that Jerome was in Congress this week and said during his highly televised address that, (paraphrased) "rates may need to stay higher, for longer and get there more rapidly", a statement that no doubt was a catalyst for bank withdrawals and prompted bank runs. The head of one the largest hedge funds heard what Jerome said and promptly told him, publicly, to shut the pherk up because he was confusing markets. Hear hear I say. EDIT, after all that I just realized that poster @eisfeld above explained already explained this quite adequately, that'll teach me to read the whole thread before responding!

Not so: windy.com

All the Indians share one room.

Maybe not so dumb, the laws of supply and demand. If the demand numbers do start to rise, they can put a cap on the number of tourists that can be admitted, that will let everyone drive up prices.

Thailand has over 800,000 hotel rooms which when multiplied by 365 nights equals 292 million guest nights or 350% of the required need If there's anything else I can help you understand, please feel free to ask. Best https://www.statista.com/topics/6907/hotel-industry-in-thailand/

Thailand occupies twice the land mass that the UK does, 198K square miles versus 98,000, yet it has a similar sized population.

Nonsense! Hot, spots, not heat spots, (that 's the rash you get when your diaper rubs), were found last week by satellite in broadly equal numbers in Myanmar and Laos, Cambodia 2,758, Laos 3,370, Myanmar 2,809, according to Gistda.

If we see 80 million tourists here, I'm orf, may as well be back home in farang land.

Sweet.

I don't want to appear that I'm taking you to task on this repeatedly Mike but that's just not completely true. All vehicles over five years old must go through a vehicle emissions test before they can be taxed. The broader problem of proactive policing is an issue that spans beyond this issue. I have to say though that having just driven from Hua Hin to Chiang Mai, I can assure you the police do patrol the highways, very much so! Maximum PM2.5 levels have been reduced to fall in line with WHO and global standards, that takes effect in June and was mentioned in a Nation news article linked below. https://www.nationthailand.com/in-focus/40017734 Thailand covers 200,000 square miles, a third of that is national park land, another fifth is protected lands. 90% of all burning occurs in national parks or on protected land, that's a huge area to try and police, how do you do that, quickly and effectively? A pox on those people that call this apologist talk, it's a practical problem that doesn't have an easy or simple answer. Nobody here has been able to put a useful practical solution on the table that we can all comment on. Instead, everyone just says, stop the burning, stupid people, stupid government, how stupid is that! You want to stop the burning and the pollution, tell us a practical way that can be done effectively without destroying the economy or the livelihood of millions of rural farmers. Blast away. ????

I'm 99% sure that they stopped that funds transfer pass through arrangement but I'm 100% certain you can't transact at the branch.